


Clarity

by Slanguage



Series: Prompts [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, Angst, Car Accident, Happy Ending, M/M, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:03:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3774829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean woke up, he had no memory of how he got to the hospital, was not wearing pants, and could have killed a man for a cheeseburger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarity

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt comes from [here](http://shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com/post/116747563108/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short)
> 
> (#18: Waking up with amnesia AU)

When Dean woke up, he had no memory of how he got to the hospital, was not wearing pants, and could have killed a man for a cheeseburger. He was awake for barely long enough to distinguish way too bright lights and a horrible constricting pain in his throat before he was dipping below the surface again, a nurse giving him a sheepish expression as she emptied a syringe into his IV bag.

It took another couple of wake ups for him to stay awake for more than a few hours but, by then, the infernal tube was out of his throat, he wanted a cheeseburger more than ever, and his brother was sitting weeping at his bedside, all snot and tears and ugly red crying face. Dean had been about to pretend he was asleep again when Sam caught him awake, and immediately nearly murdered him with a bear hug, bumbling all about how he thought he was gonna lose him and how he hadn’t known what to do.

The doctor, a bouncing hyper guy who insisted on being called Garth, ended up shooing Sam away to the corner of the room with much sympathy, telling him that he had to check up on Dean’s vitals and everything. Garth had talked so fast and so happily that Dean hadn’t even been able to keep up at first, his whole head feeling like it had been stuffed full with cotton balls, a pounding behind his forehead the only thing sharper than the glare of the lights. It was when Garth started to explain that Dean still had a concussion that things started taking a turn.

“Wait,” Dean interrupted Garth, reaching up a shaking hand to cut him off. “Why do I have a concussion?”

Garth faltered, seeming surprised in a way that people act when they’re not completely surprised but had hoped for something else. Sam’s eyes grew wide from the corner, his head snapping to a redheaded nurse that had been there the whole time. Subtly, she grimaced at him.

That didn’t help soothe Dean’s nerves.

“Dean, do you remember why you are in the hospital?” Garth asked him calmly, tilting his head to the side like a puppy. Dean tried to shake his head but it hurt too much, so he just grunted out a no. “What is the last thing you remember other than being in this hospital?”

Dean frowned at him, thinking it was a strange question until he opened his mouth to respond and—nothing. His brain just kept whirring on slowly, full of cotton and not much else. Dean closed his mouth and scowled, trying to think harder, but his headache just flared up. Dean knew it must be so simple, one of the simplest answers he could think of, but no answer came.

Garth’s face turned a little more serious when he asked, “What is your full name?”

“Dean Winchester,” Dean replied, confused. “No middle name.”

“Your birthday?”

“January twenty-fourth, seventy-nine.”

Garth nodded slowly. “What year is it, Dean?”

Dean opened his mouth and—nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

“I,” Dean tried to say, but stuttered, fear flooding into his bloodstream, making his hands shake harder. Dean didn’t dare glance around the room, not knowing what he would see when he did. “I _know_ I know, I just—I can’t—I don’t _remember_.”

“Do you remember who the current President is?”

It wasn’t just fear this time. It was _panic_. That much must have shown on his face because Garth moved forward to put his hand on Dean’s shoulder, squeezing hard. Dean sent a panicked glance to Sam but Sam wasn’t looking at him, making a point of looking away and biting his knuckles like he was forcing himself not to make a sound. His shoulders were slumped the same way they were when Sam was bullied in high school. Dean hated to think that this time _he_ was making Sam feel that helpless, that scared.

“What’s going on?” Dean demanded, his heart monitor beeping too loud. He looked around at everyone in the room, but Garth was the only one to meet his eyes. Garth looked sad, but hopeful. For some reason, it made Dean nauseous. “What aren’t you telling me? What happened?”

“Dean,” Garth began soothingly, patting his shoulder, “it’s okay. I need you to calm down.”

“What happened?” Dean demanded again, searching for the answers in his brain and coming up with nothing, nothing, _nothing_. Flickers of memories he knew were long ago, Sam young and their father old and then dead, their mother there one day and then gone the next, static and nothing where the more recent memories should be. He didn’t even know what city he was in. Hell, he didn’t even know what _state_.

“There was an accident, Dean,” Garth tried to explain, his words barely breaking through Dean’s fear. “It was a car accident. You were the passenger, and it was on your side. You hit your head pretty hard, but it’s gonna be alright. Dean, you’re exhibiting signs of amnesia.”

“Like _hell_ ,” Dean replied on instinct. “This isn’t a soap opera.”

“It’s very common,” Garth countered, his voice still soothing, a sound different than the rapid beating of Dean’s heart. Garth nodded to the nurse who ducked out of the room. Dean had a feeling he knew what she was going to return with. “Amnesia can be a very temporary problem, Dean, or it could not. We need you to be calm in order for us to tell, and then to begin helping you retrieve those memories.”

“I was the passenger?” Dean demanded, trying to come up with an explanation, still scared when he found nothing. His hands gripped the side of the bed. “I—I don’t know who could have been driving. Was—it wasn’t Sam?”

Sam was staring at him now, a new kind of pale. He looked away quickly when he saw Dean looking at him, but Dean had already seen enough. His brain felt like it was on fire as he tried to tear it apart, searching for the answer, finding nothing. His breathing was ragged and he felt like he was going to pass out, the pain still a little too much, when the nurse returned, and she wasted little to no time in putting a syringe into the IV bag, pulling the first memory that Dean had been able to supply from what easily could have been the past several years.

“You keep doing that,” was the last thing Dean was able to say before he slipped back under, Garth and Sam and the redheaded giving way to more nothing.

~*~

The next time he woke, he was much calmer, like his brain had had more time to consider the circumstances when he was unconscious, and had entirely accepted it. Which, consciously, Dean thought was bullshit, but in the end he turned out to be way too tired to put up much of a fight when Garth and Sam and a new nurse, one with black hair and red lipstick, returned to talk him through it again.

This time, they were able to say a little more. Garth was able to tell him that it was the excellent year of 2015, that he was in Lawrence, and that his other injuries from the crash had been minor other than the head injury, which had put him into a coma for the better part of a week. Garth asked him again what the last thing he remembered was and Dean, the pain in his head lessened enough that he could think a little more clearly, thought for a moment before saying, “Christmas with Sam at the beach? I think?”

Sam had turned green again before telling Dean that had been two Christmases ago. That it was April of 2015, and Dean was missing almost two and a half years. Dean almost couldn’t imagine what the hell he could have forgotten in that amount of time, but he imagined it was something great and terrible by the way Sam kept looking at him like this was the saddest moment of his entire life.

Dean asked again who the driver had been, and Sam had shaken his head, but relented when Dean pressed that the guy was okay, just a shattered wrist and some bruising. Sam had opened his mouth then like he was going to say something else, something more, and then shook his head when he thought better of it. Dean was too tired to be frustrated.

Garth told him they would start working on his memory once he got some rest. That had been yesterday and, slowly but surely, Dean had started to come up with more and more memories. There were just flashes of them—New Years after the beach Christmas, a night at Madison’s art gallery in late February, a pool party at Benny’s in May. Dean didn’t know why, but he kept finding himself frowning at the one redheaded nurse, the one that kept avoiding his gaze. Garth and Sam had noticed, but hadn’t commented. They were trying to let Dean figure things out on his own. It was frustrating as hell.

Later that night, when some of the memories had begun to come back, Dean had pulled out a golden ticket—a memory from recent, fuzzy but there, flashes of remembrance of moving into a new house. Sam looked like Dean had taken a weight off of his shoulders, offering a bright grin before informing him that had happened only six months ago. When Dean told him he didn’t remember anything else other than those small little things, Sam had deflated a little bit more around the shoulders, but his smile had been unrelentingly over-cheerful.

It was that night when, restless with sleep, unable to stay under for any decent number of hours, that he heard talking just outside of his room. The other bed was currently unoccupied, had been since he had been awake, so Dean knew before he really focused on it that it would be about him. He stayed still and quiet to hear it over the whirring of the machinery in the quiet hospital, his floor sleepy and silent.

“He’s doing better,” a female voice was saying, and it took a moment of confused displacement for Dean to think it was the redheaded nurse. He listened harder. “He’s remembering a bit more, which means it’s not permanent. He should be able to leave the hospital in a day or two, considering the head wound is also looking good. He’s a stubborn one, huh?”

“Always has been,” a deep voice responded, and the sound made a shiver roll through Dean’s body, erupting a feeling in his chest like recognition. “Does he—?”

“No,” the nurse answered with a big sigh. “He doesn’t. It would help if you could possibly talk to him, though. Voices, faces, it could all help his mind remember.”

“No,” the man stated, so firmly that it would have sounded rude if his voice hadn’t shaken even on that one word. Like he had been dying to say yes, but couldn’t. Like he thought there was a reason that Dean shouldn’t remember him. Dean’s head started buzzing, trying so, so hard to remember. “I—can’t. Not right now.”

A short silence, and then, “You can’t keep blaming yourself for something outside of your control.”

The man didn’t answer.

“Are you going to go in and see him?”

No answer—or, at least, not one spoken out loud. The nurse sighed again before there was the scuffling sound of her sneakers as she walked away. Dean kept up pretending to be asleep, breathing evenly and listening to the quiet footsteps approaching his bed, being careful not to make noise to wake him. Dean had to remind himself not to hold his breath as he heard the footsteps stop by his head, the man pausing for a long moment in the silence before shaking fingertips were suddenly gliding down Dean’s face, from his temple to his cheek, like he was something breakable. The man took a deep breath before his fingers trailed softly into his hair, still making sure not to wake him up, and his lips were pressing against Dean’s forehead. Dean felt the man’s eyelashes against his skin as they flickered shut, his lips lingering for a long moment, before the man was pulling away, and he was walking for the door.

Dean peeked one eye open when he sure the guy was gone but, instead, he was standing in the doorway, his back to Dean. His right hand, covered in a cast to his elbow, was holding the doorframe. Dean suddenly recalled Sam earlier telling him about the driver’s shattered wrist and, if the man’s posture hadn’t looked so defeated—shoulders slumped under an oversized trench coat, head hung, left hand gripping hard onto the doorknob—Dean would have spoken, asked him not to go.

For a second, Dean thought the man was going to turn around and come back into the room. And then he forcefully pushed himself from the door and disappeared into the hallway before Dean could get a good look, vanishing like he was never even there in the first place, and Dean frowned, still feeling the phantom of the man’s lips on his forehead.

And then, it happened.

A trench coat, sitting over a barstool. A pair of wide blue eyes that crunched up in the corners when he smiled. Slow dancing in the rain, not even caring when they both caught a cold. Cooking side by side, every once in a while turning to put something in the other’s hair. A redheaded sister at Thanksgiving, moaning about her nursing job with a big smile on her face. A one year anniversary. Moving into that house, sleeping side by side. Telling him that he loved him, and having that man say it back. Car headlights and pain in his head.

A man with the sky in his eyes and the sun in his smile.

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean said out loud, finally remembering, and didn’t sleep for the remainder of his restless night.

~*~

The second Sam walked into his bedroom early the next morning, grinning and wishing him a good morning, Dean overlapped him with an anxious, “Where’s Cas?”

Sam stopped short. Blinked. And then demanded, “You remember Cas?”

“Where is he?” Dean demanded, ignoring his little brother’s stupid question. “Is he okay? Is he here? Is he with Anna? _Is he okay_?”

“Dean, Dean, calm down,” Sam urged him, holding out his hands helplessly, and Dean realized that he was nearly hyperventilating, anxiety burning like a fire in his chest. “Cas is alright, Dean, he’s fine. How much do you remember?”

“Everything,” Dean told him helplessly, a little impatiently. “It hit me last night. I would say _like a truck_ , but it’s probably too soon and you wouldn’t appreciate it.”

Sam let out a long breath that sounded like the relief of a huge burden. He hovered at Dean’s side, uncertain, like he couldn’t decide whether to call the doctor or call Cas.

“Can I see him?” Dean asked, voice suddenly a little smaller, afraid, remembering how Cas hadn’t wanted Dean to know he was there last night for that same self-blame that Dean suffered from, needing to assure Cas that it was okay more than he needed oxygen, needed to assure him that none of it was his fault, but not knowing if he could handle the rejection of Cas not wanting to see him. Dean fidgeted nervously with an IV tube, avoiding Sam’s eyes.

“I’ll go see if he’s here, alright?” Sam assured him, apparently deciding that this was more important than telling Garth that Dean’s brain was probably about as good as it ever had been. Sam made one more gesture for Dean to stay there, as if he was planning on going somewhere, before he exited the room, his sasquatch footsteps echoing as he hurried down the hallway.

Dean waited there anxiously for a few minutes, half-convinced that Cas either wasn’t there or he wouldn’t come. Even so, all of that worry turned out to be for nothing, because while Dean was too preoccupied messing with the hem of the sheet and looking nervously out the window to his left, that was when the soft but firm, “Dean?” came from the doorway.

Dean’s head snapped over immediately to find Cas standing in the doorway, looking like he hadn’t slept in days, still wearing the trench coat. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair looked a little on the greasy side from where it stuck up at all angles, exhaustion showing on his face even through the hope in his eyes, Cas staring at Dean with wide eyes. Dean let out a sound that was embarrassingly like a sob and reached his hand not tethered by the IV out, managing to croak out a tearful, “ _Cas_.”

Cas was across the room in a millisecond, perching carefully on the edge of Dean’s bed. Dean’s hand curled into Cas’s shirtfront, holding on for dear life as he tugged him closer, but Cas was already moving that way anyway—Cas threw his arms around Dean’s shoulders, being oh-so careful of his head, murmuring his name softly into Dean’s hair. Dean breathed in the smell of Cas desperately, craving the warmth of his body, his hand shaking hard.

“Are you okay?” Dean demanded and, once the words started, they didn’t seem to want to stop. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you, I’m so _sorry_ , I don’t know how the hell I could’ve ever forgotten you, I’m so sorry, I love you, I’m sorry—”

Cas shook his head, cutting off Dean’s unstoppable words, and kissed his forehead again, just like he had done last night. But, this time, he ducked down and pressed their lips together, too, murmuring an “I love you” into the space between.

“Why didn’t you come visit me?” Dean asked, a little hurt. “I might’ve remembered you sooner.”

Cas shook his head slowly, eyes brimming with tears he seemed determined not to let spill. He leaned closer to Dean, pressed up against the side of his body, keeping him as close as possible while blue eyes stayed on Dean’s green, Dean’s chest expanding like a balloon in relief Cas was here and gratitude he wanted to see him and love that didn’t need any explanation. Cas carefully laid his casted right hand on Dean’s chest, right over his heart, and slowly shook his head, anguish pressing into his eyes.

“I didn’t want to see the look on your face if you didn’t,” Cas confessed quietly, vulnerable, his eyes sad but desperate for Dean to understand. Dean nodded slowly, accepting of that, willing to try to understand Cas’s position. Cas let out a breath like a sigh of relief before kissing Dean’s face again, his hand on Dean’s chest shaking.

“I thought I lost you,” Cas whispered softly, swallowing hard. He closed his eyes. “With the head wound and the blood and the coma, all of that, I—when I saw them putting you in an ambulance, all I could think was that you were going to die, and it was going to be all my fault.”

“None of that was your fault,” Dean asserted, tipping his head back to frown at him. “None of it, you hear me? You did nothing wrong. It was a freak accident. You’re okay and I’m okay and that’s all that matters, alright?”

Cas nodded numbly before leaning down and stealing another kiss, which Dean allowed him to do eagerly. He closed his eyes, relishing in the feel of Cas’s lips against his own, but then pulled back to state, “I want to go home.”

“Soon,” Cas assured him, running his non-casted hand through Dean’s hair. “With your head healed up and your memory back, they probably won’t keep you much longer. And then we can go home.”

Cas kissed the top of his head, like he couldn’t stop touching him. Dean paused for a second, his eyes closed—and then, like his mouth really was no longer an extension of his brain, Dean said, “I would kill for a cheeseburger.”

Cas sighed heavily before leaning down and kissing him again, cradling Dean’s head in his hands while murmuring that he was unbelievable, and that he would try to smuggle one in at lunchtime, and Dean kept his grip on Cas’s shirt even after Anna walked in with a knowing smirk, ragging on Dean for forgetting about her excellent charm, even after Garth did an evaluation and said he could go by the night, even after he and Cas had whispered half a million grateful _I love you_ s into each other’s skin.

It had been a crazy few days like something straight out of a soap opera, and Dean was more than ready to go home with Cas at his side and remember all the things he was grateful for, one recovered memory at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and thanks to my lovely anon for the prompt! 
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> x Kay


End file.
